The Effect of Watching English Movies with Standard Subtitles on EFL Learners’ Content and Vocabulary Comprehension

Abstract

This paper is mainly concerned on studying the impact of English movies with subtitles on content comprehension of English movies and vocabulary comprehension. Forty -four students in Arman Garayan Language Institute were selected from two intact classes of audiovisual and Films Translation course. A movie named Dangerous knowledge was selected based on the content and level of difficulty of the language. First, both classes watched the same movie, but class 1 watched it with English subtitles and class 2 without subtitles. After watching the movie, the participants answered the relevant multiple choice vocabulary and content comprehension questions. The data gathered were subjected to the statistical procedure of paired samples t-test. The results showed that subtitles had a positive impact on content comprehension of English movies. It can be concluded that the participants comprehend the subtitled movie better than the one without subtitle. However, the subtitles did not have an effect on participants’ vocabulary comprehension.